Everybody likes pop-punk band Bowling For Soup

John J. Moser, McClatchy/Tribune newspapersCHICAGO TRIBUNE

When the pop-punk band Bowling For Soup started in Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1994, it was as a bar band, "playing to drinkers," frontman Jaret Reddick says. And even when the band got signed by Jive Records in 2000, its releases still "were for rock radio because our audience was predominantly rockers," Reddick says.

These days, the band is far better known for its quirky, radio-friendly hits such as "1985," "Girl All the Bad Guys Want" and "High School Never Ends."

But Reddick says it's the fans, not the band, who have changed.

"Musically, that's what we've always been -- we've sort of been that band that everybody can like," he says in a telephone interview from a tour bus in Texas. "We're the band that 15-, 16-year-old kids can like, but your little sister can like it and your mom will like it too."

Reddick says the shift started when the band's song "Punk Rock 101," a spoof on teens being different to fit in, somehow became successful on Radio Disney, which is geared to the 'tween market.

Suddenly, more people seemed to get the joke.

The trend continued with their 2002 album "Drunk Enough to Dance" and its hit, "Girl All the Bad Guys Want," which got a Grammy Award nomination.

And by the time the pop-punk band released "A Hangover You Don't Deserve" in 2004, they were a certified hit, with a top 40 disc.

The topper, Reddick says, was that disc's "1985," a song about a mother who's stuck in her rocker mode from 20 years ago.

"'1985' really bridged that whole thing together," he says. "Kids got it; kids were into it. They thought the song was about their mom. The moms got it because, 'Hey, that song is about me.' College dudes got it 'cause they thought it was funny that we name-checked all the bands that dressed up like Motley Crue in the video.

"But I think that it's just a great song, and it just came at a perfect time for us."

With that, Reddick says, "both sort of worlds sort of meshed together into what our audience is now -- I mean, just our age bracket is absolutely amazing as far as what our demographic is."

"It's weird, I mean we have grandparents that come that bring their grandkids to shows that know all the freakin' words to all the songs."

Reddick says the band doesn't have to work too much on its image.

"We are just who we are," he says. "We're just normal guys who were very, very lucky to get out of a small Texas town and go out and make people smile."

The band's latest disc, "The Great Burrito Extortion Case," released in November, also broke into the Billboard Top 100 and had the hit "High School Never Ends."

But the album also contained a song -- its second single, "When We Die" -- that critics have called Bowling For Soup's attempt at being serious, as it speaks about the pitfalls of a father and son's relationship.

Reddick says maybe it's critics who are too serious.

"The thing about Bowling For Soup is, you go back and listen to all of our records, we have serious songs on all of them; there's always a love song or a song about my brother that isn't funny and is in no way meant to be funny," he says.

"The reason why 'When We Die' has made people try to put some sort of stamp on it is because we released it as a single and we've never done that before with a ballad or with a serious song."

He says the band obviously doesn't take itself too seriously, as evidenced by the fact that it enlisted '80s TV star Lee Majors for the father role in the video. "He was the freakin' Bionic Man, for crying out loud," he says.